What are data centre SLAs?

Data centre SLAs (Service Level Agreements) are contractual guarantees covering uptime, power availability, temperature, humidity, and incident response times. Standard colocation SLAs guarantee 99.99% uptime (52 minutes of allowed downtime per year) for Tier III facilities and 99.999% (5.3 minutes) for Tier IV. When the provider misses the SLA, tenants receive service credits — typically 5-30% of monthly fees per incident, capped at one month's charges. The fine print matters: most SLAs exclude scheduled maintenance windows, force majeure events, and tenant-caused outages. Negotiate for uncapped penalties, root-cause analysis requirements within 48 hours, and the right to terminate without penalty after repeated SLA breaches.